who invented the first computer in the world and when?

Answer 1

The first electronic digital computer was the ABC built by John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry in 1940 at Iowa State University. Several of its ideas were incorporated into the ENIAC which ran from 1945-1955 and is considered the first functionally useful electronic digital computer. The patent for ENIAC was awarded to Atanasoff by court order in 1974. The first commercially available electronic computer in the USA was the UNIVAC I, bought by and delivered to the US Census Bureau in 1951.


One of the earliest personal computers was the Intellec 4 by Intel, using their first commercially produced microprocessor - the four-bit 4004. The Altair built by MITS was the first commercially successful personal computer and the computer Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote Microsoft's (then known as Micro-Soft) first software product for - "BASIC for the Altair."

Douglas Engelbart, then at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), demonstrated a mouse-keyboard component at a computer conference in 1968 in San Francisco.

Answer 2

Define computer. In the original sense of the word, computing solely means calculation. And the throughput of a computer can also vary: do you mean strictly numbers, visual screen output, word processing, video games or something else?

* The Chinese invented an abacus during the 13th or 14th century, though it may have been first invented by ancient Romans and adapted by others.

* John Napier invented his "Bones" in the early 17th century.

* Charles Babbage invented (though never built) a programmable computer in the mid-19th century. It was built in 1991 and it worked. Babbage's problem was inability of machinists to built the parts to the fineness of quality required for his machine.

* The first modern computer, ENIAC, was built in 1946, depending on your opinion of which one qualifies (some were as early as 1942).

(See the links below.)

If you are talking strictly of inputting data and leaving the machine to produce results by itself, then it is ENIAC. But just imagine how the world would be if Babbage had been able to build his computer: steam driven calculations and data processing. Sci-Fi writer Bruce Sterling wrote a novel about such a scenario entitled, "The Difference Engine".

Answer 3

Willhelm Schickard invented the first mechanical calculator in 1623. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Schickard

Charles Babbage designed (but never built) the first programmable computer in 1833, although this was actually partially built in the 1990s and shown to have been a viable computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage. Ada Lovelace actually wrote a program for this computer which had the machine been available would have been able to calculate a numerical sequence known as the Bernoulli numbers, and so can be considered the first computer programmer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

Working non-electronic programmable computers were developed by Konrad Zuse in 1941 (the Z3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3 and by Howard H Aiken in 1944 (Harvard Mark 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_I

The first electonic programmable computer is generally considered to be the ENIAC, invented by John William Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert and developed between 1943 and 1945. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

However a 1973 court case ruled the ENIAC patent invalid, on the grounds of a prior patent by John Vincent Atanasoff for the Atanasoff-Berry computer (ABC), developed between 1937 and 1942. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff-Berry_Computer The judge therefore ruled that the ABC was the first electronic computer rather than the ENIAC, HOWEVER, the ABC was not programmable, and was not what is known as Turing-complete. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness. In this respect the ABC was similar to the Colossus code-breaking machine developed by Tommy Flowers in 1944, which can also be reasonably claimed to be the first programmable electronic computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

The Wikipedia listing for the Z3 has useful table of the competing merits of the various 1940s contenders for the title of "first computer".

Answer 4

First electronic computer (1943) : the building of ColossusColossus

By designing a huge machine now generally regarded as the world's first programmable electronic computer, the then Post Office Research Branch played a crucial but secret role in helping to win the Second World War. The purpose of Colossus was to decipher messages that came in on a German cipher machine, called the Lorenz SZ.

The original Colossus used a vast array of telephone exchange parts together with 1,500 electronic valves and was the size of a small room, weighing around a ton. This 'string and sealing wax affair' could process 5,000 characters a second to run through the many millions of possible settings for the code wheels on the Lorenz system in hours - rather than weeks.

Both machines were designed and constructed by a Post Office Research team headed by Tommy Flowers at Dollis Hill and transported to the secret code-breaking centre at Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes, where it was demonstrated on December 8, 1943. We have to fast forward nearly thirty years to 1972 for the arrival of the first desktop all-in-one computer, which are more familar to us today. That honour falls to the HP9830. But unfortunately few people got to hear about it because Hewlett Packard marketed it primarily to scientists and engineers - by nature very quiet people!

Answer 5

Charles Babbage (1791 - 1871) invented the analytical machine, the pioneer of the computer in 1836.

Answer 6

Some people claim it was Charles Babbage but the abacus is also considered to be a computer.

Answer 7

Al Gore invented it (five years before he invented the Internet).

Answer 8

Sir Charles Babbage in the late 1800's I think

Answer 9

Charles Babbage in 1820.

Answer 10

I don't know; but it's a pity we can't filter out answers from Wikipedia . I suspect the people who know the answer to this question off the top of their heads are too busy to surf YA.